Blog: Sharing Words for Healing

I noticed recently that I have been experiencing a lot of emotional ups and downs. I will be feeling happy and positive, and then something will shift and I’ll start feeling irritated, down about myself, and generally in a bad mood! And it’s so annoying! But it gets worse. I find myself getting stuck in these negative states, then getting mad at myself for being in a bad mood, and then trying to force myself out of the mad mood and failing. It’s a downward spiral. I’ve started to investigate further into this pattern, and discovered a deeper theme: resistance versus ease.

Resistance is a desire for reality to be different than what it already is. Resistance is created in the mind through thinking. To illustrate this concept, I’ll give a recent example from when I went skiing with friends. We got started late, and with snow on the roads and picking up friends, things were taking longer than expected. So, my mind started thinking: “Ugh, this is taking so long; this is so annoying; why didn’t we leave earlier? I should have done this differently.” The image: tapping my foot, lips pursed, feeling anxious and irritated. Does this feel familiar? I was in the energy of resistance – resisting the current reality. However, there was no way to go back in time, no way to change things now, and honestly, there really was no problem! We got to the mountain and had an awesome day skiing. My realization is that being in resistance of my reality is a waste of energy, doesn’t change anything, and ends up getting me stuck in a bad mood. So what’s the alternative?

The alternative is ease. To me, ease is a feeling of leaning back. Relaxing the tension in my body, and letting my attention drop away from my chattering, judging, thinking mind. As soon as I go into the energy of resistance, I feel myself tense up and start to become annoyed and judgmental. When I notice this happening, I set my intention to relax into ease. I physically lean back, relax the tension in my body, and drop my attention from my mind down into my body. Naturally, I take a deep breath. Then I can consciously choose to start thinking differently about the situation. In the skiing example, the thinking might shift to: “This is no problem, I’m glad we are taking the time to pick up all our friends and drive carefully in the snow. We’ll have plenty of time, I’m looking forward to skiing.” This feels like ease. Once we lean back into ease, it creates space for enjoyment and peace.

Now, there are more “serious” situations in life than getting to the ski mountain on time. I often feel myself resisting my current reality in my career, in relationships, or with money. In my career, I’ll get into the energy of struggling and striving to make things work and increase business. I’m trying to do better, be better, work harder, and be different than what I am. In this state, I feel like I’m desperately reaching and grasping for something different. However, this energy is the opposite of what attracts in abundance and success! So what I’m practicing now, is leaning back into ease. Reminding myself that I am good enough and have something valuable to offer. Re-centering in myself and my truth.

I am not saying that you can sit on your couch and do nothing to be successful. I am saying that rather than coming from an energy of resistance, struggling, striving, comparing, and not feeling good enough, lean back into the center of yourself and take intentional action that is grounded in your truth. In the end, this ends up feeling like ease. Way easier than striving to be something that you are not! And way easier than resisting what already is.